Bill Clinton O.J. Simpson speech made in part to counter Colin Powell

The Clinton White House’s decision to have the then-president speak out on race issues in the aftermath of the verdict in O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial was in part seen as a way to counter a potential presidential bid by Gen. Colin Powell, a document released Friday shows.

“This is a defining moment. The country is waiting for the president to talk,” speechwriter David Shipley wrote in a memo to colleagues sent on Oct. 12, 1995, more than a week after the not guilty verdict was read.

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Clinton was “one of the few American leaders with the credibility to address both blacks and whites — more than the G.O.P.; almost as much as Powell,” Shipley argued in the note, which was sent to five communications and strategy staffers, including Don Baer, Dick Morris and George Stephanopoulos. “In fact, if he demonstrates that he can bring people together now, he could preempt the vision of Powell as the only leader who can erase division and bring us together.”

Powell ultimately chose not to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, but could have been a formidable opponent for Clinton in the general election.

Shipley, now the executive editor of Bloomberg View, wrote in the memo that the whole country was waiting for Clinton to speak out on the “racial divide” following the announcement of the verdict. “If he does not step up to the plate, it will be seen as an abdication of leadership. If he does step up to the plate, but does nothing more than fall back on the dated elixir of ‘opportunity and responsibility,’ then the effort will fall flat and we will have missed a terrific opportunity to show leadership. It will be seen as a failure. The president must address the rift head-on.”

Clinton did just that four days later when he spoke at the University of Texas at Austin, urging Americans to begin by “recognizing one another’s real grievances” but to also “take responsibility for ourselves, our conduct, and our attitudes.”

“America, we must clean our house of racism,” he said in the speech, echoing language in Shipley’s memo, which suggested that Clinton “clean our national house.”